We need look only to Australia's past to give public education a future

Michael Kirby

It is time for Australians to rediscover the original ideals and optimism of public education. Because of pressure groups and wedge politics, the grand objectives have been forgotten or frustrated of late. Where did we go wrong? How can we reverse our present direction?

It would be hard to imagine a more noble aspiration than the original idea of public education in Australia. The young William Wilkins came to this country to head up colonial education with knowledge of the new national schools in Ireland. The young Henry Parkes drafted the first Public Schools Bill. It passed into law in NSW in 1867, against powerful opposition from the churches and the new University of Sydney. They wanted to keep education in private and religious hands.

Suddenly, the notion of creating public schools across continental Australia grasped the infant country's imagination. Quality education was to be available to every Australian child. We would be the first continent on Earth with a legal right to schooling. There were three core principles: it would be free, compulsory and secular. Only the scattered communities in the United States aspired to anything like it. Look at any established town and suburb in Australia and it's next to certain that you will find a public school building with ''1888'' or ''1896'' carved over the entrance. And as Parkes hoped, these schools would accompany and stimulate Australia's moves to federation and nationhood.

When I was at school I was raised in these ideals. Learning the alphabet from Miss Pontifex in Class 1A at Strathfield North Public School in 1945. Learning about the new Declaration of Human Rights from Mr Redmond at Summer Hill OC class in 1949. Striving for success at Fort Street High in 1951. My later schools were ''selective''. But the ideals we were taught were exactly the same. Egalitarian. Democratic. Excellence. Secular. Religion, apart from a one-hour optional period, was a private matter. Never did I hear homophobic propaganda or classist superiority. We were proud of our teachers and quietly confident about the superiority of public education.

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So what went wrong, such that Australia now spends a higher proportion of public money on private schools than any other developed country except Chile and Belgium? Why have teachers' salaries in Australia slumped compared with teachers in other OECD nations? Why is Australia placed 18th out of 31 OECD countries, and below the average, in spending on school education? The burdens of these below-average performances fall heaviest on our public schools. This is undoing a great national dream.

In the past decade, nearly half a billion federal dollars has been spent on the chaplaincy scheme, when public education was thirsting for proper basic subventions. People with little training in religious studies were given a new role in public schools. Wilkins and Parkes would not have been surprised. But they would have been distressed at the increasing numbers of small and poorly performing religious schools breaking down the universality of public education. This was done basically for political reasons - wedge issues in swing seats. A new alienation was introduced. And most astonishing of all, attempts to provide secular ethics instruction was fought by some Christian churches.

We must recapture the secular element in Australia's national life. The place to start is in the schoolroom. No school should make a gay student feel alien and justify this by ''religious doctrine''. No school should exalt racial or classist superiority. The ethos of public education must be defended because the old adversaries have never given up in their opposition to the basic ideals of Australia's public education.

The recent OECD report on education showed that in Australia only 68.6 per cent of public expenditure on schooling goes to the public system. This compared with 99.2 per cent in the United States, 88 per cent in Finland, 85 per cent in Korea and an average of 85 per cent throughout the OECD. Why should it be different in Australia? Why should the ideals and values of public education not be the primary responsibility of the public purse?

Of course, as in any large system, there can always be improvements. ''Temporary'' accommodation that is around for too long. Lack of effective engagement with parents and citizens. Reluctance sometimes to embrace a culture of excellence. Neglect of maths, science and skills in English, our natural advantage in Asia/Pacific. The need for special help for Aborigines and other disadvantaged students. Coming down hard on any homophobia and bullying. Above all, funding for public schools should be increased as the Gonski committee proposed, as an investment in Australia's future.

But laws and budgetary allocations will not ultimately change Australia's educational doldrums. Such initiatives must be accompanied by a revival of the idealism and optimism of the movement that created Australia's public school system in the first place. Nothing less than a confident return to the idealism of those early days will do. Rebuilding public education in Australia is in the interest of us all.

Former High Court judge Michael Kirby will receive the Department of Education's Meritorious Service to Public Education Award on Tuesday.

35 comments

Kirby is right on all points. Many of the parents paying medium to high fees in private schools would be unaware of the noble basis on which public education in Australia stands. Even after decades of political deliberate undermining of public education many state high schools in Victoria still stand proud producing an excellent education that is inclusive and secular. Unfortunately these schools are in higher Ses areas and in the pooerer suburbs and rural areas public funded private mainly catholic schools have ghettoised the student population. The elitist schools charging high fees are at one end of the spectrum. It is low fee schools in struggle suburbs that ensure the local public school is faced with students from the most difficult circumstances. The only solution is full integration of these low fee schools into the public system with no fees charged but full responsibility to educate a fair share of the poorest students.

Commenter

sipper

Location

Inner melb

Date and time

December 04, 2012, 4:58AM

Agreed - the elite schools will always have an "elite" market of parents that can afford the fees but the low fee paying schools in poorer SES areas just create an unnecessary divide socially and in terms of funding. More money needs to go to these low SES schools. I wish more people gave a Gonski!

Commenter

Kat

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

December 04, 2012, 7:31AM

No, Kirby is not right on it all. He falls into to usual trap of whatever the question, more money is the answer.

This has been tried, funding has been going up, but education outcomes have been going down. Universities need to put remedial writing classes on for first years, and apprentices' maths skills are not sufficient for trade courses.

A German system of parallel grammar and trade secondary schools may be a better answer than just pouring more money into the current system.

Commenter

morrgo

Date and time

December 04, 2012, 11:26AM

Where did we go wrong? Two words: John Howard. How did you miss that, Michael? You must have a very short memory. He single-handedly destroyed a public education system that was the envy of the world because of political ideology. Howard changed the formula for funding to favour private schools, and began a media campaign of denigration and disparagement of the public system. It worked. The growth of private schools was unprecedented, with a flood of middle-class families taking their children out of public schools. Thee effects are for everyone to see as Australia has slipped drastically in international education ratings.

Howard's 'dream' of a two tier system has become so entrenched that governments wouldn't touch the education funding issue, as so many families' budgets were (and still are) constrained by private school fees. The only answer is to return to a more egalitarian, inclusive,and better funded public system, but don't hold your breath. With O'Farrell's cuts likely to be introduced in NSW, any increase by Federal Labor in funding won't be enough.

The destruction of our education system has been breathtaking, and sadly ironic, when one considers that Finland's system is now the envy of the world,and they haven't any private schools at all,and base their success on egalitarianism.

Commenter

Bemused

Date and time

December 04, 2012, 5:44AM

Great comment. Immediately cancel all govt funding of private education and transfer it to the public sector.

Commenter

Franky

Location

Sydney

Date and time

December 04, 2012, 6:39AM

Sadly it was a Gough legacy that started the funding model on religious schools. John Howard capitalised on it and saw it a vote winner. And then of course the disaster of the ACL in his ear and hence a waste of half a billion to AM brainwashing our young malleable minds.

Commenter

A country gal

Date and time

December 04, 2012, 6:55AM

Nailed it Bemused!

Commenter

Dr MS

Date and time

December 04, 2012, 7:52AM

@A country gal

Attempting to pin the destruction of our once excellent public school system on Gough just won't do. John Howard did more than capitalise on it.It wasn't that it was a vote winner, he turned it into one by his erroneous defamations about public education and public teachers, and it was purely ideologically driven. He used unjustified fear-mongering as a means of manipulating parents about their precious children. I know because my husband and I were going through the issue about where to educate our child at the time,as were our friends. Having ourselves gone through an excellent public system,we knew exactly what John Howard had done and how he was doing it. Thousands upon thousands of good parents who were otherwise more than happy to send their children to their local public school were scared into doubting the system and slowly over those years the system became as it is today.

And now our society pays the price for his nasty, small-minded vision.

Commenter

Bemused

Date and time

December 04, 2012, 9:41AM

With much of this I agree. Why does such a learned man deliberately try to make people such as I feel angry by using the lazy man's word "homophobic", a manufactured word which is an insult to the English language?

I defend the right of non-government schools to teach their own value systems and to receive reasonable fundsfrom taxes, but they appear to receive far too much and thus public schools too little. A strong government system is very important to a country. And if only politicians who really understand education were in charge of it things would be much better than they often are.

Commenter

David Morrison

Location

Blue Mountains

Date and time

December 04, 2012, 5:54AM

Homophobia is no more a manufactured word than is many other religious constructs.As you would be aware Justice Kirby was himself a victim of smear due to his sexual orientation.Sure have your values in 'your' schools but the tax payer shouldn't have to pay your bills.